


Walk It Off

by starkraving



Series: A Slight Variation [3]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Domestic Fluff, Emotionally Hurt Magnus Bane, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Power Dynamics, a lot of people died, about all that, and magnus feels, some kinda way
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2019-05-09 10:56:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14714729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkraving/pseuds/starkraving
Summary: Magnus has a bad habit during wartimes. Catarina feels the need to draw attention to it and Alec is gonna pry the truth out of his weird warlock boyfriend if it kills them both. Relationships that form under duress are tricky and you need to talk out your trauma. Okay, kids? Takes place between season 2 & 3.





	Walk It Off

“You’re not okay,” Catarina says.

“No,” Magnus says. “I guess not.”

He’s lying on the couch in her apartment. Catarina is seated with her legs crossed and his head in her lap, the nape of his neck cradled in the cross of her ankles, the back of his head resting in the hollow of her legs. She has her fingers set against his temples, a slow, cool push of magic bleeding from her fingertips directly into the bones of his skull. She works her fingers in slow, lovely circles, pulsations of healing magic sliding down his spine through the rest of him with each gentle rotation.

Her hair smells faintly of jasmine, dreaded and coiled on top of her head. A style he hasn’t seen her use in a while, but one he likes.

“I’m glad it was you,” she’s saying. “If it had to be someone. Glad it was you.”

“I wish I had your optimism on the subject.”

“No, you don’t. If they’d asked me, I would have been a mess.”

“Bold of you to assume I’m not a –”

Magnus inhales sharply as Catarina runs her thumbs along the back of his head, sending a burst of morphine-like energy down every line of his nervous system and for a moment the world kind of buzzes away, fuzzy like an old TV screen. His brain snows out. By the time he comes back to himself, Catarina has a palm over his forehead, her other hand rubbing idly at his shoulder. This is very familiar. Correct. He feels like he should have been here much sooner.  

“I haven’t done this for you since the nineties,” Catarina murmurs.

“Mmm,” says Magnus, instead of finding actual words.

His is breathing slow and deep, his body a dull, warm hum on the fringes of his awareness now, like he’s two inches separated from his own skin. He feels a little drunk, which is the point. He’s feeling a little disconnected. Also the point. He can feel Catarina’s fingers combing restlessly at his hair, the blunt curve of her nails dragging pleasurably across his scalp, pulling just slightly where his hair gets thick at the top.

“You with me?”

He nods.

“You need to talk this shit out, Magnus.”

He pouts instead of answering. Catarina sighs.

“You want me to knock you out? I’ll make it dreamless, I swear.”

“Promises,” he mumbles.

“No, for real. No dreams. You want me to knock you out?”

“No,” he says.

“Magnus, I can feel you haven’t slept. I’ll look out for you. Haven’t I always?”

“Yes,” Magnus murmurs, “you always do.”

She must read the melancholy in his words because she leans over him. His eyes are closed but he can still imagine her face hovering upside down directly over his looking worried but brusque. No one kicks your ass while you’re down like Catarina. The same way no one stitches you back together, thread by gentle bloody thread, pulling your wounds shut in the aftermath. Magnus has been here before, in much worse condition. Catarina has had her hands in his guts before, literally, which isn’t something a lot of people can say.

“I’m worried about you.”

Magnus keeps his eyes closed.

“I’ll be okay, Cat. I just needed this.”

“I think you need more than a sleep over and an anti-anxiety charm.”

“I’ve had worse. This will pass.” 

She sighs. “Mag, I haven’t seen you this out of sorts since eighteen-fifty-three.”

Ouch. Eighteen-fifty-three was a low year.

Cat’s thumb runs a short apologetic path along his temple. “Sorry to bring it up,” she says.

Magnus has been on the other end of this conversation before. Enough times not to ignore it. Over the centuries, Cat maintains her position as one of the few warlocks with enough context to read his actions in the bigger picture. He opens his eyes. To his surprise, Catarina is blue, her glamore pulled off her skin and laying bare the mark of her demon parentage. He’s always found it lovely so he kind of smiles and reaches up to brush the back of his knuckles along her cheek. She smiles back. Her teeth are brilliantly white in the shifting cobalt of her skin. Like there’s an ocean of anti-freeze glittering inside her.

“You think I’m making mistakes?” he asks her.

“I’m saying it’s possible that you’re coping with shit because we were at war with Valentine, but we’re looking at some peace right now and I don’t want you to look up and wonder what the fuck happened to your life while you were on the warpath.”

“War doesn’t give you that option,” Magnus points out. “You know that better than most.”

“I do. But this is not your first rodeo.”

“True. It was my first body swap though.”

Catarina winces. “Anytime a demon starts fucking around with your insides, it’s understandable that you’re not gonna be okay.”

“It’s not the swap itself,” Magnus says, unspooling this a little. “And it’s not just the agony rune.” He lifts a hand, staring at his palm. “I don’t know why it’s getting to me now. Such a little detail, but the room they put me in. I guess it reminds me of…” He closes his eyes for just a second. “They strapped me in that chair and it was like the Uprising again and I thought… I thought, god, I got out of the kill rooms in Yonkers and I’m still going to die like this?”

Catarina freezes. Then starts running her fingers through his hair again. “Oh Magnus, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs.

“Have you told anyone else?” she asks gently, leadingly.

“I don’t know how to tell Alec about that,” Magnus whispers.

“You just fucking tell him. Don’t coddle a shadowhunter, Magnus.”

“It was Alec that strapped me down.”

Catarina stops, her fingers closing instinctively in his hair. “You didn’t tell me that.”

Magnus kind of barks a laugh. “He didn’t know.”

“Of course, he didn’t. That was the point. To make your allies treat you like their most hated enemy. But, baby, it wasn’t for you. All that hate. All that horror. It was for Valentine.”

“There was a time though,” Magnus says. “Not too long ago, all that violence _was_ for me.”

“I know, but that’s not what happened _this_ time.”

“I can still…” Something splits down the interior of Magnus’ chest, like a membrane finally tearing under too much tension and it’s both an agony and a relief when he says, “Its two things I see when I close my eyes. I see what the agony rune showed me and I feel Alexander pulling me into that chair.” His stomach turns over even as he says it, his insides writhing like there’s a fist inside him and he swallows the taste of stomach acid. “It wasn’t me, but it was me, Cat. He was killing _me_.”

“Jesus, Magnus.”

“I don’t know how to tell him that… sometimes, when he grabs my arm to get my attention, I want to rip his hand off.”

“He’s a soldier.” Catarina shifts her weight a little. “Just tell him. You’ve been with soldiers before. They’re particularly understanding to not being okay. Part of why, I think, you like them.”

“Please don’t psychoanalyze me right now.”

“I’m not,” lies Catarina, ever so kindly, “I’m saying your boyfriend is tougher than he looks and he looks pretty tough already. It’s obvious to me you want to confide in him, but he’s also the source of some of your fucked-up-ness right now. So you don’t know how to tell him that and the dichotomy is killing you, hon. You’re on the horns of a real dilemma here. So let me make it simple: Just tell him.”

Magnus thumbs moisture from the corners of his eyes.

“I told him.”

“You told him about the agony rune which is hurting you over ancient history that even I don’t know about. You didn’t tell him about other part, the part that’s actually to do with him and the here and the now and his shitty, shitty day job.”

“His job is _so_ shitty,” Magnus despairs.

“Yup. You’re dating a shadowhunter.”

“How did this happen?”

“It’s like that movie Pocahontas,” says Catarina. “You know the Disney movie where they make it seem really romantic that the chieftain’s daughter falls in love with a white man, but really the reality is they were a bunch of genocide fuck head –”

“I _know_ ,” Magnus moans. “Cat, I’m here for comfort not a lecture.”

“You need tough love, old man, that’s what I’m here for.”

“I’m a moron,” Magnus says, like a revelation. 

“You’re not, you just follow your dumbass heart into dumbass places.”

“So I’m a moron,” Magnus translates.

“Yes. But you’re _my_ moron.”

There’s is a grumpy but companionable silence, a specialty of Catarina Loss that makes her worth more than all the world to Magnus who can’t get comfortable in a silence to save his life. She lays a palm over his forehead, just low enough that the edge of her hand kind of covers his eyes and the cool darkness is weirdly comforting. Catarina has bedside manner perfected by eons of practice. She’s also got the built-in brutality of a field medic – ruthlessly efficient when need be, sawing off gangrenous limbs with a loving heartlessness.

She’s always been there when he comes staggering back from the frontlines. He knows part of her guilt with him is how many times she’s put him back together just enough to send him back out. The sheer number of times she’s had to do it.

“Magnus,” she says, in a tone that’s not a funny metaphor about Disney characters.

“Don’t,” Magnus says, already sensing where this is going.

“I feel obligated to bring this up. I wouldn’t if I didn’t think it was important. You know that. I will leave you to do the dumbass shit you’re gonna do unless I think it’s gonna do you some irreparable damage. Okay? Can I talk?”

He draws a breath, holds it, considers the infinite paths through the universe he might open and jump through if he wants to avoid this conversation. Easy as opening a door and walking through it. He could roll off the couch right into a portal if he wanted to. A portal straight into his own bed where he could curl up under the duvet and ignore everyone and everything forever.

“Okay, talk,” he says, because he’s a moron and Catarina is always right.

“I’ve known you a long time. Okay? So, when I say this, it’s with love and also a very, very long history of observed evidence.”

Magnus groans. “Cat…”

“You’re in too deep with the shadowhunter,” she says, perfectly diplomatic in tone. “It’s been like a _month_ , Romeo.”

“You talked to Dot,” Magnus murmurs, accusing but somber.

Dot is still missing, after all.

Catarina sighs. “Magnus, you always do this.”

“I don’t _always_ do this.”

“Oberon, Camille, George, Lucy, Imatsu.”

Magnus stares, a little hurt. “Okay, Cat. Careful.”

“Magnus, you latch onto people during bad shit. And I’m not saying those relationships weren’t with valuable, honorable, good people in a lot of cases, but I am saying you do that.”

“That’s not what happened,” Magnus starts to say.

“You met Alec after the Circle killed Elias and five other warlocks at your safehouse. You crashed Alec’s wedding in the same forty-eight hours that Ragnor died. You said you were in love with him the same day fifty Downworlders died at the hands of the Soul Sword. You’ve been in battle together, fought the same enemy.” Catarina stares down at him, her hands cool against his skin which feels too tight suddenly over his bones. Gently, she asks, “In what way is this not a foxhole romance?”

Magnus says nothing for a while.

Then, “Alec is more to me than someone I grabbed in a fight.”

“Of course, he is. I’m just pointing out you guys are moving a bit fast now that the end of the world got canceled. Maybe slow down?”

“Why is this so important? You’ve never lectured me about my relationships before.”

“I lectured you like _hell_ about Camille.”

“Since then,” Magnus says hastily.

“Because this time you’re dating someone who’s running an organization diametrically, politically opposed to everything you’ve built.” She lays both hands on either side of his face, tipping his head back a little to meet his gaze. Her eyes are dark and penetrating. “He could _destroy_ you, Magnus.”

His pulse jumps imperceptibly, something in his chest curling tight.

“That’s a bit dramatic,” he manages eventually.

“It’s not. He could.” Cat curls her fingers against his temples. “Listen: He’s the Head of the New York institute, a Lightwood, a shadowhunter. The whole New York Downworld rippled when you started working with the Clave but we all get it. Valentine was back. It was war and the Clave are good at war. You were shoring up allies, but now...”

Magnus stares up at her, blank-faced.

“Are you saying people are pissed because I’m dating a shadowhunter? And it’s hurting me _politically_?”

“Don’t play dumb. You know that’s exactly what’s happening.”

“Valentine is dead. Clary killed him and the Soul Sword has been disarmed.”

“Which is great, but people are still… talking.”

“It’s Lorenzo, isn’t it?” Magnus growls. “Every time…”

“He’s keeps asking people where you really stand. It’s bullshit, but… people are skittish.”

“I stand with the Downworld,” Magnus whispers. “I will _always_ stand with them. I’ve stood with them for centuries. I’ve burned down cities for the sake of the Downworld. I broke it off with Alec and allied with the Seelie Queen for the sake of the Downworld. If I _have_ to choose… I choose them. I _did_ choose them. How can a month and half throw everything I’ve done out the door?”

“Immortals have long memories,” says Cat gently, “but we know how _fickle_ things are, Mag. You can never be sure what anyone will do in the right circumstances and you’re volatile. It’s why they like you fronting for them because you scare the living _fuck_ out of every bad guy – shadowhunter to seelie to vamp.” She shakes her head sadly. “But it makes everything you do that much more tenuous. You know that. You’ve build your empire on that.”

“It’s not an ‘empire’,” Magnus says, sitting up, pulling his head from her hands.

“Your reputation then,” says Cat, not offended by his withdrawal, or maybe she was expecting it. “Your life,” she adds.

Magnus sits there, one arm draped over his bent knee. “Alec wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Magnus, Alec is a shadowhunter,” she says, like he doesn’t know somehow. “Don’t give me that look. You’re love-struck, I have to point out the obvious. Alec doesn’t _get it_. He doesn’t have context. Even this one thing, the fact you’re having physical triggers to him touching you _because you saw warlocks die like that in Yonkers_ is something he doesn’t get.”

When he doesn’t immediately respond, she sits forward.

“Magnus,” he says gently. “I don’t doubt for a second that he’s head over heels falling down obsessed in love with you.” She shakes her head. “That won’t stop him from hurting you. He already has.”

“That’s not fair. He didn’t know it was me,” Magnus snaps.

“I’m not talking about the body-swap,” she says, utterly calm in the face of his anger. “I don’t blame him for that, but – fairness aside – he hurt you then too. Then that business with the Soul Sword? That hurt your credibility. You vouched for Alec and he immediately botched it. I like Alec, I do, he’s genuine but that was his fault and you know it.”

“I’m not breaking up with Alec for _appearances_.”

“This isn’t me telling you to break things off, you drama queen.” Catarina smacks his shoulder. “This is me telling you to be more careful. We’re not at war now. Slow down. Take care of your own business. Get your house in order, warlock.”

She grabs his shoulders and tugs him backward until he falls reluctantly back into her lap.

“Hey. Lecture over. Okay?”

He glares at her, then offers her his hand. She takes his palm tight, holding fast, a faint shiver of magic in her fingers as there is likewise a breath in his. The crackle of interlocking ether sends a jolt through them both but they hold on until the two-way current running off their souls slides into sync and, for a moment, the world is far and away and all that exists in the boundless universe contained between the interweaving of their fingers.

And then it passes and the room settles.

“I’m mad at you,” Magnus says, “but thank you for saying that.”

“Maybe you’ll be less mad after you’ve slept on it?”

He sighs. “Okay. Okay.”

“Alright. Just relax.”

Magnus closes his eyes, shoulders unwinding. The last thing he feels is the gentle press of fingertips against his temples and how particularly careful Catarina is when she unravels her magic into him. The first thing he sees when he wakes is a mug of coffee and a friend grinning down at him and, really, in the grand scope of things there are few things more valuable. He smiles.

 

* * *

 

Alec is banging around in the kitchen when Magnus gets home to the loft in Brooklyn. Puzzled, he wanders into the entry between the living room and the kitchen and leans against the door, watching the shadowhunter root around under his sink for dish soap, muttering to himself with a restless frustration. Magnus may or may not be using a charm to make all his movements silent purely for the drama of sneaking up on his warrior boyfriend in a domestic setting.

But now, standing here, watching Alec sigh and mutter irritably to himself, he wonders at this: The mundane familiarity of what, only twenty years ago, would have made his blood run cold. A shadowhunter in his home.

“Where the hell do you keep your soap?” Alec is hissing to himself, sticking his head under the sink, like the dish soap will be deeper inside the cabinet. “Do you magically wash _everything_?”

“Yes, actually,” Magnus says.

Alec instantly slams the back of his skull into the sink.

“Oh my god!” Magnus abandons his post looking cool by the door and dashes around the kitchen island. “Are you okay?!”

“Don’t… don’t sneak up on me,” Alec says, grimacing as he sits back on the floor.

 “Let me see,” Magnus says, kneeling down and taking the shadowhunter’s head between his hands, gingerly running fingertips along the back of his skull, carding through the soft, dark of his hair. Alec tolerates this with a good-natured huff, sitting on the floor, his long legs bent slightly while Magnus ghosts a breath of healing magic along the sizable bump he can feel. “Sorry about that,” he murmurs, smoothing Alec’s hair.

“You’re back,” Alec says, smiling.

“Yes,” Magnus says, amused. “I said I would just be a few days.”

“How’d it go?”

Magnus hesitates. “Well, it’s been a while since I’ve been to the London Institute, but I finished the ward renewals a day early in fact.”

“Oh?” Alec’s not good at hiding his emotions so it’s pretty clear he’s initially hurt hearing this.

Magnus gives him a consoling kind of look. “I _meant_ to come home but… I stopped over at Catarina’s for the last day instead.”

“You stayed the night there?” Alec asks, genuinely puzzled. “Is Madzie okay?”

“Yes. She’s fine. They’re both fine. I stopped there for _me_.”

Worry knits Alec’s his brow. “Is something wrong?”

There is a long pause.

“Well, I didn’t plan on getting into this tonight, but then you smashed your head on my sink and I feel compelled to just get it over with.”

Alec looks alarmed then. “Over with…?”

Magnus blinks, then realizes what he just said and blurts, “No! No, no, nothing like that. _Sorry_.”

“Are you trying to kill me? You’ve been back for thirty seconds and I’m injured and two steps from a heart attack.”

“Your life would be boring without me,” Magnus points out.

“It would also be less painful right now.”

“I could kiss it and make it better?”

“Promises,” Alec says hopefully.

Magnus rolls his eyes, pulls Alec’s head down a little and kisses the top of his head. His hair smells like sandalwood, the one in his master bathroom, so Alec’s still been coming here at night rather than stay at the Institute. He doesn’t know what that means exactly. What that signifies. A kind of waiting? He sits back on his heels and kisses Alec’s forehead, then his nose, then his mouth, and he’s a little gratified when Alec makes a low whining sound and grabs a fistful of Magnus’ collar, pulling him into a deeper, hungrier kind of kiss.

Magnus is very tempted to just fall into this and let it go where ever their idle heartache takes them, but it’s about then Alec’s palms slides down Magnus’ arms, a familiar move. Magnus knows before he does it that he’s going to take Magnus’ forearms in his hands and, from there, pull the warlock’s hands around his waist. There was a time, about a month and a half ago, that he found that perfectly acceptable.  

This time though…

“Mm— wait.” Magnus extracts himself, panting a little. “Wait.”

Alec looks a little dazed, flushed, his lips kiss-bitten and wet. “Yeah?” His gaze clarified. Then he sees Magnus’ face. “Hey.” His eyes widen. “ _Hey._ What? Are you okay?”

“Can you not… don’t grab my arms like that.”

“Like… like what?” His hands jerk away from Magnus’ biceps, so fast it’s almost violent. “Was I too rough?” His expression gets strained. “You said it was okay to use my full strength. Did I go too far? Did I not –?”

“You’re fine,” Magnus says quietly. “It’s not that.”

“Then what?”

Magnus lays a hand on Alec’s shoulder. “Alexander, you… remember everything that happened after Azazel cursed me?”

“Yes,” Alec whispers.

“I know I’ve said that I’m alright but… but I’m not entirely.” He waits but Alec says nothing, just listens, looking frightened and still. “It’s not just nightmares, Alec. Sometimes it’s this.” Magnus reaches out, taking Alec’s arms in his hands, one hand to one arm, grip him just above the elbow and squeezing gently. “I just… forget where I am for a moment.”

“What?” He looks stricken, pale. “When? How many times has that happened?”

“I don’t know, Alec. A few.”

“There have been a _few_ times that I touched you and it made you feel being back in the vault? The vault where we almost…” He looks sick now.

“It’s just a little PTSD. Nothing I can’t walk off and it’s… it’s very specific things.”

“What things? Tell me and I won’t do them again.”

Magnus thinks that’s a bit dramatic and makes it clear in tone.  “Just small things, Alec. I… if you’re looking for an exact list I’m not sure. But when you grab my arm too fast sometimes or put your arms around my waist from behind. Those two things I guess.”

“Okay. I won’t do that anymore.”

“Alec, I’d rather you just warn me so I can get used to it again. I don’t want to lose familiarity because of lousy thing that happened.”

“Okay. Whatever you want. I’ll do whatever you want.”

Magnus tilts his head. “Alexander, none of this has to do with you. It’s me.”

“What the _fuck_?” Alec says, startling Magnus with the violence of it. “How can you say that? It’s everything to do with me. I asked you to help with Azazel. It was my sister that went missing and then, after, I didn’t recognize you. You were right in front of me and I didn’t recognize you.”

“Uh, because I was in another much less attractive body,” Magnus says, trying to lighten the tone.

“No,” Alec snaps, not going for it. “You were right in front of me.” He swallows, raises unsteady hands and carefully, with agonizing gentleness, fits his palms to the side of Magnus’ head, curling his fingers to the nape of his neck. “Magnus, I have nightmares about that fucking vault. I have nightmares where I don’t stop Imogen in time and when I get back in that room, it’s you in that… it’s you I’ve killed.” He’s breathing faster than before, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “I didn’t know how you can stand to look at me and now it turns out...”

“Hey. No.” Magnus takes Alec’s wrists in his hands, holding his touch against his skin. “I don’t think of you that way.”

“Magnus. Yes, you do and you should because I almost killed you.”

“It’s not like that.”

“Stop lying for my benefit. Please.  _Please_.”

Magnus hesitates then.

Alec’s looking at him with this almost frantic pleading, so raw it can’t be new. This is something he’s thought about. This is a chronic fear Magnus is confirming and his immediate instinct is to, again, confirm to his lover that all is well and he needn’t worry…

“Please,” Alec says again. “Magnus just talk to me.”

“Okay.”

Magnus sits back until they’re both seated, legs bent up, tangled with each other. Magnus’ left leg is crooked up slightly between Alec’s knees, his boot hooked under the space beneath Alec’s right thigh. Magnus leans forward, bracing his arms against Alec’s knees, putting his weight there so he can look up at the other man’s face. The kitchen light a little muted, warm. Yellow overheads put gold highlights in the dark edges of Alec’s hair. The sun is setting outside. Alec looks almost relieved.  

“Alec, I think you know things have been different for a while.”

“Yeah,” he says quietly. He’s visibly afraid now, which breaks a specific place in Magnus’ heart, but he pushes on. “Yeah, I know.”

“A lot has happened.”

“Yeah.”

“The truth?”

“Please. Just tell me something true.”

“I love you,” Magnus says, because it seems the thing to say.

“Magnus.”

“Okay, okay. Something true.”

Alec waits.

“I went to London to renew their wards because Ragnor Fell is dead and they were hoping, because I was his oldest protégé, that I would know his work well enough to act in his stead.” Magnus feels his throat starting to tighten, the acidic flavor of grief pressing unstoppable against the back of his tongue. “I… I had to unravel his spellwork. Centuries worth of his craft, and replace it with my own because I don’t know how to do the ward style Ragnor used to –”

His voice breaks.

Magnus covers his mouth with one hand.

Alec immediately moves forward pulling Magnus into his arms, cradling his head against his shoulder. Magnus hugs him back, clenches his eyes shut, lets the molten heat run out of him like blood let from a wound. Alec doesn’t say anything. Just makes these… soft hushing noises. He waits until Magnus gets his voice back.  

“I had to destroy it,” he breathes, voice shaky. “I had to destroy his work, Alec.”

“I’m so sorry, Magnus.”

“They _paid_ me to do it.”

“Magnus…”

“He would have hated me for doing it. The ward-work he did for the London Institute was… he was so _proud_ of it and I just… I demolished it for a commission.”

“You had to,” Alec whispers. “The Institute needed maintainable wards. You had to. Better it be you than some… some stranger who didn’t care. Right? At least you knew.”

“I keep forgetting he’s dead,” Magnus rasps. “I wake up and I think I’m going to call him about… about a spell or a problem I’m having trouble with and then I—” he struggles with it—"I remember and it’s like he’s dying again every morning, Alec. He left me part of his estate. I’m supposed to figure out what to do with his things but I... I just keep portaling there and sitting in his study because it still _feels_ like him.”

“I didn’t know,” Alec whispers.

“I couldn’t stand to tell you,” Magnus says.“I had to tell the warlocks and I just didn’t want to talk anymore about it after that.”

“How long did you know him?”

“Almost my whole life.” His eyes burn with fresh heat. “Alec, he knew me before I’d chosen my name.”

 “Magnus,” Alec says, so gently it’s almost inaudible, “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. When did this happen?”

“He died a day before your wedding,” Magnus says, the admission clawing at him even as he says it.

Alec kind of stills… then runs his hand across the back of Magnus’ head, accepting the fact at face value. He presses his face a little nearer, into Magnus’ neck.

“Okay.”

“I buried him in London,” Magnus says, “alone, because I couldn’t risk drawing out other warlocks while Valentine was hunting us.” His breath is coming so fast, his heart racing like he’s in a fight. “And then I came back… and I… I was completely selfish and went to your wedding because I couldn’t stand to just hold still and I needed to… to _do_ something and that’s the worst reason...”

“But it was okay. I was glad you came.”

“You explicitly told me to back off and I didn’t.”

“It’s okay.”

“It _wasn’t_ okay. I was out of my mind.”

“Fine,” grumps Alec, voice gruff in Magnus’ ear. “Then it was crazy thing you did, but I’m glad you did it because I was about to live a miserable lie. I’m glad you went crazy, but I’m gutted that you had to be heartbroken to do it, Magnus.” He hugs Magnus tighter, until his ribs ache pleasantly from the pressure – a suggestion of angelic strength in the way he pulls the warlock closer, tugging him across the floor a little. “I’m heartbroken that you’re heartbroken.”

Magnus kind of laughs.

“Everything went wrong with me the moment you met me.”

“Then I’ll get to know you when things aren’t going wrong. It’ll be a cakewalk.”

Magnus groans. “You don’t understand what a mess you’ve signed on for.”

“You want to do this?” Alec asks, snorting. “I was raised like a soldier by whole life by an organization of bureaucratic bigots that just barely got over a ‘murdering people in cold blood’ phase of history. I’ve been killing demons and training for political office since I was five. I don’t know what a goddamn iPod is. I’ve never dated anyone or done anything that wasn’t for the Clave and it took me twenty-four years to admit I wasn’t straight.” Alec pulls away just enough to press his forehead back to Magnus’ brow. He breaths, “You tell me I’m not a mess you’re gonna have to put up with.”

This would be the perfect moment to kiss him and accept Alec’s assessment of their perfectly paired dinner sets of shitty personal history. They could set a domestic looking table with their matching personal shortcomings and Magnus could call this good and they could close the door on this. They could.

He could do that.

But…

 “You don’t know what I am,” he says quietly.

Alec looks confused and clearly a little surprised that he is pushing this on.

Resolved, Magnus says, “You don’t know what I’ve done. Not really. You’ve read my Clave file, but you don’t know. We can’t compare.”

“Ugh,” Alec says, disgusted. He pulls back so he can speak at volume without yelling in Magnus’ face. “I don’t care what you’ve done.”

“You shouldn’t say that,” Magnus whispers.

“I don’t care what you’ve done.”

“Stop it,” he says, starting to pull back.

“I don’t care what you’ve done,” Alec insists, softly, so gently, but with so much steel in the syllables. He lets Magnus pull away, but he keeps saying it. “Nothing you’ve done could make me not love you.”

“You don’t know that,” Magnus hisses, rising to his knees, preparing to stand up. “You don’t have the _imagination_ for what I might be capable of.”

“Then scare me,” Alec demands, catching Magnus at the waist, to keep him kneeling. “Do it. Tell me something awful.”

“No, I don’t want to, not yet.”

“Why not.”

“Because!” Magnus sputters, using eight-hundred years of immortal charisma and charm to make this very compelling argument. “Just because, Alec!”

 “Okay then,” Alec says, unbothered by the outburst. “I won’t pry. It’s your life, your past. I want to know about it because it’s you.” He shrugs. “But just want your present. If that’s all you want to give me. I just want you to feel safe with me, Magnus, that’s all.”

Magnus stares blankly at Alec, raw with disbelief at the words this man is saying to him, gutting him casually on the floor of his own goddamn kitchen. He keeps hearing Catarina, a voice three hundred years constant to him, telling him with absolute certainty, _He could destroy you._ And he knows she’s right, of course, of course, she’s right. Magnus is on his knees with a shadowhunter and he can’t get up.

“I feel safe with you,” Magnus says, aching with every word. “That’s the problem.”

Alec looks mildly exasperated now. “Why is that a problem?”

“Because, goddammit, you make me weak.”

And even as the words leave his mouth, Magnus wants to grab them and swallow them again, unmake them. But there isn’t a spell for that and he has to live with the way Alec visibly takes those words in and processes them, sifting through them. Alec stares at him with those wide, dark eyes that detail every part of him and in the new context, start to reposition Magnus in a new world where Magnus says things like that out loud. It makes his very ancient heart race, his skin prickle with panic disproportionate to what’s happening.

“How do I do that?” Alec asks almost curious.

“I don’t know, you just do,” Magnus confesses. He sits back on his heels, exhausted suddenly. “I don’t think straight with you.”

“There’s a joke in there…”

Magnus groans, dropping his head back. “Shut uuuup.”

“Magnus.” Alec fits his rough palms to his jaw, guiding his eyes back to his. “You’re the strongest person I know. And I don’t just mean you’re an all-powerful warlock who could never be weak, ever, by the way. I know people who’ve had a thimble-full of the challenges you’ve had and they buckle. You don’t. You’re not weak.”

 _I am though, I am,_ says that voice again.

But Magnus doesn’t speak out loud.

“Okay?” Alec sounds hopeful. “I don’t get why you’re scared. You’re Magnus Bane. You shoulder stuff that would break other people and I wish you’d let me help, but even if you don’t I know you’d pull it off anyway. Somehow, because you’re you.”

And because Magnus doesn’t know what to say to that – how to get away from how sincere and genuine this man’s faith in him has turned out to be – he goes for a gut shot.

“Did you know,” Magnus whispers, “twenty years ago, Valentine set up kill rooms just like the vault? Just like it in Yonkers.”

Alec startles at the violent transition, hesitates, then goes with it. His hands slide to Magnus’ shoulders so he can lean back, put more room between them for the size of what he’s talking about.

“I’ve read the files,” he says.

“But you never saw the inside of one,” Magnus grits. “You never… there’s a scar in the world wherever a warlock dies. The flow of magic is torn in the veil where they fall and you can _feel_ it. There are places in this city I can’t even walk past because so many died there and the air there won’t stop screaming. Do you know that?”

Alec visibly steels himself. “I didn’t know that.”

“I almost died in a room like that. During the Uprising. I was trying to get everyone out of New York. It wasn’t even a Circle member that captured me, it was a patrol. He hauled me in for a magic-use violation. A fine at most, routine traffic stop type of thing.” His voice is shaking. “Forty minutes later, I was in a black site. I was dead. You didn’t come back from black sites back then. I just remember… I remember how that room _shrieked_.”

Alec’s hands tighten on his shoulders.

“I got away because I bribed one of them, because under all their racist, classist, _bullshit_ I was, I don’t know, their _favorite_. They let me go and killed two other Downworlders that day and I couldn’t stop it.”

Alec says nothing, just keeps listening.

“Elias and five other warlocks were killed the day I met you. Elliot killed himself to stop Valentine. Dorthea is still missing. She’s probably dead but I _can’t_ stop looking for her.” His throat is starting to ache, his eyes burn. “Ragnor is dead and I’m not over what Azazel did. I’m not over your lying to me about the Soul Sword. I’m not over the damage the last month has done to my people and the way they’re never going to trust me like they used to.”

His hands are knotted tight, he can’t quite look Alec in the eyes, so he settles for staring angrily somewhere between his nose and his collarbone. So all he can see is the full shape of his mouth, neutrally set, giving away nothing.

“You see,” Magnus says, “I’m not that strong, Alec.”

“That’s what you got out of that?” Alec says. “That you’re _not_ strong?”

“Stop it,” Magnus snaps.

“Stop what?”

“You’re about to tell me it’s fine and none of it is my fault, but it is.”

“You’re a leader,” Alec says, almost coldly, almost militant. “You think I don’t understand what it means to make a bad call? Fine. It’s all your fault. You were High Warlock so it’s your fault that some genocidal maniac attacked everyone and then you had to make impossible tactical decisions. And it’s _my_ fault I fucked up all the trust between the Clave and the Downworld. Everyone that died because of that, that’s on me.”

Magnus looks up, startled. “That’s not –”

“What?” Alec cuts in. Magnus is meeting his eyes now and they’re hard set and relentlessly cold, drilling into him. “The same? Why? Because it’s the Clave instead of the warlocks? Because there’s more paperwork involved when I fuck up? What? Why’s it not my fault but it’s your fault? We were both in that mess so you don’t get to come out smelling like roses and neither do I. That makes me weak then? Screwing up makes me weak?”

“No, of course not.”

“Then you’re not weak. You’re just—” Alec sighs, brow knitting— “hard on yourself.”

“It’s not that simple,” Magnus insists, but feels himself losing ground here.

“Seems simple. You say I make you weak. I don’t see it.” Alec’s mouth pulls a little bitter but resolved. “You picked the Downworld over me when I broke trust. And if I fuck up again, I have every faith you’ll rip me a new one and do what’s right for your people because you’re not physically capable of doing anything else. I just don’t see the weakness you’re talking about. I just don’t.”

 _He could destroy you_ , Catarina is saying.

Alec is drawing him back down, with nothing but his fingertips alone Magnus’ hips, then his ribs, his collarbone, sliding along either side of his neck until he’s still using nothing but his fingertips to pull Magnus lips to his. There’s not an ounce of insistence in how Alec is touching him, coaxing him back with the dull magnetism built into the structure of his hands somehow, lined in his palms.

“You’re not weak,” Alec says, “just because you’re _sad_ that you’ve lost people.” His words brush Magnus lips with every syllable and he’s so sensitive to the touch it’s agony every time. “Jesus,” breaths Alec. “You’re not weak because you fuck up either. I never thought I’d have to tell an eight-hundred-year-old something so basic but here we are.”

“Alec…”

“Magnus. It’s okay. Valentine is dead. War’s over.” Alec pulls beck just enough to look him in the eyes. “If we met under fucked up circumstances, that sucks, but let’s keep trying to figure it out and not make big, sweeping assessments about who we are just because of that. Is that okay? Do you—” he hesitates, swallowing— “do you still want to do that?”

“Of course, I do,” Magnus whispers.

And Alec pulls him down, pulls his mouth against his and it’s like every ounce of resistance in Magnus goes out. Lost in the way Alec gives way to him, the way his hands cradle his head and the kitchen kind of slips away and for a long, shivering moment, there’s just the warm pressure and touch so vital Magnus lets momentary addiction rule him.

He thinks, not entirely consciously, _Alec Lightwood really could destroy me._

Then he stops thinking because Alec pulls him down on top of him, pulling Magnus into the space between his thighs, dragging his tongue with a sudden molten urgency between the warlock’s teeth and he’s gone. He’s completely gone. Alec’s fingers dragging down his spine, digging into the muscles of his back, his breath against his mouth, his neck, biting at his pulse until any memory of discomfort is obliterated in the frantic press of fingers and lips.

“Magnus.” Alec says it like he’s being taken apart. “Magnus. _Please_ …”

And there’s nothing he can do but move forward.

**Author's Note:**

> In which Magnus is very conflicted about dating the enemy, but the enemy is very, very nice this time around and keeps kissing him really good. The clave is awful and I want to bring it up constantly. Questions and comments fuel my soul.


End file.
